Thursday, August 27, 2009

Somebody just said that to me on a public (allegedly) professional bulletin board when I challenged their premise.

Way to make your point, o nameless one.

Speaking of lizards... Geico has gone back to live with Jennifer, his original mommy, as of yesterday. I shall miss the lil' rotter. Somewhat. He actually bit me yesterday before he left, after a long dry spell of many months. What's up with that?

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Several years ago I started getting e-mailed jokes from someone I didn't know. The jokes were actually pretty good, compared to the dreck that usually makes the rounds of the in-boxes.

I finally e-mailed the joker back--and it turned out she thought she was e-mailing a co-worker. The co-worker must have an e-mail address very close to mine. (But I am the one, the only original CrankyBeach. Never forget that.)

Not too long after that, I got an e-mail that contained some pretty privileged information. It had to do with that lady's cell phone account.

I called her provider, told them they were e-mailing the wrong person, and never heard anything again.

Earlier this evening I was telling this story to some friends. So imagine my surprise when I got home, to find a confirmation of my DirecTV order. Addressed to the other lady, at my e-mail address.

So I called DirecTV to tell them they had the wrong person--and the very nice phone rep told me their computer system is undergoing maintenance until 6 a.m. eastern time, so I'll have to call back in the morning.

Do you know what I could DO with the information I've collected over the years on this lady, were I the larcenous type?? (No, I haven't saved any of it, and don't intend to, and I'll be deleting the DirecTV message just as soon as I straighten them out. And no, I don't have her correct e-mail address, or I'd just straighten her out myself.)

Let this be a lesson to you. Be very, very careful when giving your e-mail address to companies you do business with, that you have them read it back to you and make sure they have it exactly right.

For those who don't feel like clicking on the link, or in case the link is broken by the time you read this... it's Dan Aquilante of the New York Post, reviewing last week's sold-out Moody Blues show at Radio City Music Hall. The money quote:

... why hasn't the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted the Moody Blues? It doesn't make sense given the band's contribution to rock and its continuing performance excellence. On second thought, forget the feeble Hall of Fame; the Moody Blues are still a rock band -- not a museum piece.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Even with 3 or 4 popup blockers running, some sites still managed to feed me pop-under ad windows. One of the worst offenders has been Snopes.com, a site I like to check fairly often to see what's new in the world of urban legends. But every time, I would get 2 or 3 very annoying pop-under ad windows which I would then have to manually close. Very annoying.

If this problem plagues you too... try this. But only if you're using Firefox. (And if you're not... why not??)

(No, they did not pay me to advertise their product, and I don't see that they charge for it anyway.)

Saturday, August 8, 2009

You can blame faithful reader Bum for this one. He directed me to the San Diego zoo's pandacam--where they have a brand-new baby panda, fresh out of the oven.

Their pandacam apparently is not in color, and most of the time you can't see the baby because mama is curled protectively around it--but she just left the nest to do some undisclosed business of her own, and left the baby visible for just a few minutes:

The accompanying information says that the baby was about the size of a stick of butter when it was born.